Yevgeny Prigozhin May Have the Last Laugh

Initial reports suggest that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the ruthless mercenary leader of the Wagner Group, has been killed. Although confirmed details are scant, his private plane has allegedly crashed or been shot down, an event that many have interpreted as an assassination. Prigozhin probably knew to stay away from windows in high buildings, so it seems plausible that Vladimir Putin took him out at 28,000 feet instead.

Coup plotters rarely die of old age. Prigozhin sealed his fate in June when he launched a failed mutiny against Putin, which fizzled hours after it began. No dictator can afford to tolerate that kind of disloyalty: Every moment that Prigozhin lived made Putin look weaker, a dictator seemingly forced to accommodate a man who had directly challenged him, simply because Russia needed the Wagner Group for its disastrous war of attrition in Ukraine.

Putin likely knew that letting Prigozhin live risked emboldening enemies within to mount additional threats. In an interview earlier this year, Putin said that leaders must be able to forgive, but that not everything can be forgiven. When the interviewer asked him “What can’t be forgiven?,” Putin’s answer was immediate: “Betrayal.”

And so Prigozhin has apparently gone down in his private plane. The Kremlin could easily have staged a less conspicuous death that would be more likely to dupe outsiders into wondering whether Prigozhin had died of natural causes. But dictators don’t usually want plausible deniability. When they use deadly force against their enemies, they want everyone to know—a shot across the bow to other would-be plotters—which is why Russia’s enemies abroad have been killed with highly controlled radioactive substances that point directly to the Kremlin. If you’re going to send a message, make sure everyone knows who sent it.